President Obama’s inaugural speech money quote

This is the line from the president’s inaugural address that I think really said it all:

“To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.”

Ah, of course he didn’t say that. Conan the Barbarian said it, in response to the question, “What is best in life?” President Obama merely paraphrased it. Republicans don’t want anyone helping disabled children or people whose homes are swept away in terrible storms. And so they deserve to be crushed and driven before us. Or, him, at least. Thus prompting the sweet lamentations of Ann Romney.

A lot of the president’s critics are reacting to his second inaugural almost appreciatively. The speech clarified his worldview in which expansive, growing government is the only answer to the Malthusian chaos of unfettered capitalism favored by his opponents. There is no middle ground. The president has abandoned the tedious rhetoric of new, third-way politics — of trying, hopelessly, to play nice with Republicans — and embraced his government-centric vision whole hog. It is refreshing to know where the fellow stands.

This was not his intention, certainly, but I think President Obama has done everyone a great service by this speech (and, generally, by his enemy-crushing demeanor since the fall elections) in that he’s re-starting a discussion of the meaning of civil society.

There is a lot of social territory between the “single person” acting (haplessly) alone and the swaddling benevolence of “commitments we make to each other,” by which he means an ever-growing federal government.

William Voegeli wrote his essay “Against Swedenization” in the most recent National Review before Obama’s speech, but it nevertheless is an eloquent response to it. In its barest outline, “Against Swedenization” describes the social perils of taxation that rises above half of what taxpayers earn (Hello, California!). But perhaps “peril” isn’t the right word, since Voegeli makes such a strong case that the Swedes (and taxpayers of pretty much every social-democratic state in Europe) really like having government take care of all their needs. Indeed, that’s the problem.

By smothering citizens with all the well-intentioned goodness that progressives like President Obama prescribe, they are at the same time sapping the vitality from the social compact, from civil society. He quotes social scientist Charles Murray: “Every time the government takes some of the trouble out of performing the functions of family, community, vocation, and faith, it also strips those institutions of some of their vitality — it drains some of the life from them.”

As opposed to a society dedicated to progress through initiative and self-improvement, the new social compact, as defined so eloquently by Obama on Monday, becomes “an alliance of experts and victims,” as Harvard’s Harvey Mansfield put it.

Whatever kind of real-world society that sort of vision ultimately becomes, it is not, as President Obama clearly believes, a dynamic, creative or expansive society. For all its pitfalls and unfairness, American society did not have a vast, permanent, all but hopeless underclass until the Great Society rolled in. Now it does, and all the benevolence and good intentions of Washington, D.C. has only rendered it more entrenched.

And it is a good thing that some people, at least, are considering what Obama’s society is going to look like. Because, basically, it’s already here.

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